Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds can easily be mistaken for a button masher, and at times it can be. However, it does have a deep battle system hidden beneath the mania of endless attacking and weird flashy effects that won't mean much to the naked eye.

With a little training and understanding of those flashy effects, I think this game can be mastered to a point where you can actually know what you're doing rather than just blindly pressing buttons, hoping that every attack lands.

Sure you can spam specials or the basic attack buttons to your heart's content, and for the earlier difficulties you can get by, but once you get to Hard mode and onward, it would be useful to know what you're doing so you can get the most out of this fantastic beat 'em up.

In this guide we will cover:

• The Dangers of Mashing
  
• Countering, Guarding, Freudian Slip Shifting and Emergency Mode, Oh My!
  
• Backstepping and Lane Changing
  
• Basic Combo Strings
  
• Advanced Combo Strings
  
• Guard and SP Cancels
  
• Using Your Guage Right

Controls

L = Light Attack
M = Medium Attack
H = Heavy Attack
SP = Special Attack

B = Backward
F = Forward
D = Down
J = Jump

For the first few difficulties, and especially in Stage 0, you can be tempted to just mash your way through success. And to some degree you can get by, but once you're stripped of your powers and your delicious stat boosts, this may prove incredibly detrimental to your survival.

It's important to know which attacks in your combo string will land and when to stop because enemies can end up flanking you. You can be in a middle of a combo, cornering a huge horde of enemies, but then another horde can sneak up behind you and you end up attacking backwards.

Before you know it, that corner horde will recover and while you were busy with the one that back attacked you, the corner horde has now flanked you.

It's important to know how to avoid situations like this so that you can sparingly use the Auto Guard and Emergency Mode, which I will cover in more detail in the next section.

Another thing to note is getting a feel for your character's attack ranges because the only other thing worse than getting flanked is having your combo interrupted by an enemy within the same horde you're comboing. Sometimes hits miss because you get pushed back from cornering a horde, or you just happen to be out of range for an attack or two, leaving you vulnerable to the enemy.

There are two ways to counter an attack from an enemy. You can either throw in an attack of your own and it will win out in the clash due to superior speed, or it will win out because of the range differential. So say you have an enemy wanting to punch you in the face, but you use a crouching attack, their fist is out of range from your face and your low attack wins. Or if you have the speed stat boosted enough, you can attack an enemy during their start up animation.

However, an even more reliable way to counter an enemy's attack is using the Counter Guard. Before you get hit, press the SP button and you'll repel the attack. A big red vortex will stun the enemy and leave them open to your attack.

This is extremely useful against enemies who have strong guard barriers and instead of chipping away at it with a bunch of attacks, you can save your time by stunning them in a Counter Guard.


Press F just before an enemy attack lands, and you will slip past through the attack to get into closer range.

I don't know about you, but this technique is incredibly difficult for me to pull off. It's rewarding though when you can do it because it gets you into a closer range than Counter Guarding.

While Counter Guarding will knockback your enemy and stun them, Slip Shifting will keep them in their attack animation while you draw in closer, leaving you to do some combos starting from the short range light attacks.

Incredibly useful tool, especially when enemies throw projectiles at you. You can save your Automatic Guard barrier for tougher situations. When those fat dudes are throwing cakes at you and shrine maidens in Stage 6 spam their magic, Slip Shifting can help you reduce damage or completely avoid it if you get the timing down.


Press SP after getting hit to knock all surrounding enemies away. This costs a tiny fraction of your lifebar and is only available if you have at least 25% of your health.

Emergency Mode is one of the most spammed mistake in this game. You have got to be careful how often you use this because it can drain your lifebar if overused.

As the name implies, it should be used for emergencies when you have no other way out of a situation. It's ideal to save Emergency Mode when you want to create space on the field so you have breathing room to pick up recovery items, revive allies in co-op, and to reassess the situation.

A good way to save needing Emergency Mode is learning how to Back Step and change lanes correctly.

Hold SP and press B

Great tool to maintain space and escape crowds of enemies. Incredibly useful when you're doing corner combos and another horde is about to flank you. You can back step and get behind them to continue the assault.


Another way to control the crowd is by changing lanes. This seems limiting at first compared to other beat em ups with more free range stages, but switching between two lanes can work very strategically in your favour.

If you have less than 25% health and can't use Emergency Mode anymore, this is a good alternative to create some distance from you and a horde of enemies.

Depending on your character and if you have upgraded the combo abilities in the skill tree, you have a wide variety of attack options that make this game so fun and smooth to play.

From simply mashing L, you will see every single attack from light to heavy attacks, and although you can do this to succeed, I'd like to reiterate that you can't simply rely on mashing in later stages and difficulties.

You have:

• 3 Attacks to start with at level 0
  
• 2 Medium Attacks and get a 3rd attack from upgrading Combo Lv.1
  
• 2 Heavy Attacks and get a 3rd attack from upgrading to Combo Lv.2

What makes this game's combat system so fun is that you can omit certain moves in between each string to skip over to the next level of attack strength. You can start a combo with the initial Light attack and you can skip to Medium or Heavy by pressing the appropriate button.

For most characters, pressing F+M or F+H you can execute a singular attack level finisher, and they basically replicate the final M or H attack in each of their respective strings. That means if you want to start off with a few L attacks and want to do the final M or H attack in each string, press F+M/H to skip the first 2-3 attacks that lead up to them.

This is incredibly useful if there are a few filler attacks that may not reach an enemy. For instance with Cocoa, if you upgrade her Combo Lvl 1, there's a short ranged kick added to her Medium string that whiffs if your previous attacks push an enemy too far away for it.

This can leave you vulnerable, break the combo count, and overall doesn't feel as good as landing every attack purposefully.

It's important to know the properties of each attack in a string because for Yuzuha for instance, her M finisher launches your enemy and you might have to end the combo there if there's no one else approaching you to even let you use the Heavy string. You end up looking foolish hitting air using all these slow Heavy attacks on nothing if you just keep on mashing.

Now I won't give any character specific combos here, this section is more for explaining how the attack strings connect with each other, the rest is up to you to customize!

With unlocking EX Attacks and SP Skills, it's completely up to you how you mix them into the regular attacks. The flexibility and possibilities are almost endless in this game, and as Martha Stuart would say, "that's a good thing."

This is an ability you need to upgrade from the skill tree. While you are in automatic guard, you can cancel the guard time and do a myriad of things such as jump out of the horde of enemies or attack back. Just about anything cancels the guard so that you don't get trapped.

Guard Cancels are a useful tool if you find yourself getting swarmed often and would like to reduce the amount of damage your Guard Barrier takes.


Possibly my most favourite action in the entire game is SP Cancels. During any basic attack or SP attack, you can cancel the recovery animation by pressing the SP Button.

Use the hell out of this to continue long combos, especially during the end of heavy attack strings or SP skills. There's a lot I can say on the subject, but this video will show you just how useful it can be.


For some characters, it's actually better NOT to upgrade the Guard Burst ability so that you can extend combos with SP cancels instead. It depends on how you feel and what skills you want, which is the beauty of this game, but personally for me I like Yuzuha and Cocoa without their Counter Bursts since their move lists lend you to make the most use of SP Cancels.

But I don't completely disregard Counter Bursts as I like letting Kurisu have it. Not only is the Critical Burst useful to push enemies to the other end of the field, but at least from what I've tried, her moves don't go well with cancelling and resetting.

That's just me though. You would have to find a perfect fit that works for you. Not every character needs to have every ability in the skill tree as some play a bit better without certain abilities upgraded. Keep that in mind when building your characters!

At the top left corner of the screen is a blue bar that can be used for a variety of things:

• Outrage Attack
  
• EX Attack
  
• Overdrive
  
• Critical Burst
  
• Phantom Break

Depending on your playstyle and the characters you choose, you may use all, some, or even none of these guage depleting techniques. They all have their own unique uses and advantages for different types of situations.


Pressing M+H will make your character shoot a scatter of electricity around. If you use this below 100% guage, it can work as a cheap and weak projectile.

If your guage is at 100% or 200%, this attack will stop time temporarily and hit several targets around you. This is useful if there are flying enemies that are hard to get in fear of landing in a horde after jump attacking. Bringing them to the ground make them easier to attak. It's also good to use this attack against bosses if you want to freeze them in place, but make sure to wait they leave themselves open for the attack or they'll just block it.

Otherwise, it's also an ineffective way of breaking guard, so I don't recommend it for that usage.


Pressing any direction + SP+H will unleash a stronger version of your character's specials This is great for finishing off enemies and clearing the field so you can collect all those yummy EXP gems.

Be careful not to waste EX Attacks on tiny hordes and when you're flanked as you can be cancelled out of it if you get hit. Best to use a Backstep or lane change to create space before planning to use this technique.


Only available at 100% or 200% guage, pressing L+M will speed your character up and slow your enemies down. This will allow you to dish out a ton of hits all around the field at break neck speed, but be careful not to attempt attacking an enemy in their attacking animation as you can lose a precious millisecond of the Overdrive before you can attack again. I say that seriously and not sarcastically because it doesn't last that long, and any time you're hit during Overdrive is a waste of your guage.

I personally like using Cocoa's F+SP loop (with Guard Cancel) along with Kurisu's basic moveset as they work well with Overdrive. But that's up to you to figure out what you prefer in terms of which characters should even use Guard Cancels and Overdrives.


Hold SP and release to do possibly the most powerful attack in the game aside from the Phantom Break. Not only does it do massive damage, it also sends a few enemies flying across and off screen. This technique is best used when you have big enemies that are convoluting the overall canon fodder. The pushback also damages the enemies the flying one hits in its flight. Yippee for carnage!